Positive Health Online

Abstract

GANESAN S(1) and COLLEAGUES, (1)Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Victoria, Australia; Contemplative Studies Centre, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Systems Lab of Neuroscience, Neuropsychiatry and Neuroengineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia. :saamprasg@student.unimelb.edu.au. ; (2)Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Neurobiolgía, Querétaro, México; (3)Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science: Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.; (4)Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts; Brain and Cognitive Science, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; (5)Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.; (6)Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University, School of Public Health, Providence, Rhode Island.(7)Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.; (8)University of Southern California Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Los Angeles, California; University of Southern California Center for Mindfulness Science, Los Angeles, California.; (9)Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, Santa Monica, California.; (10)Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, Ohio; (11)Normandie University, Université de Caen Normandie, INSERM U1237, Neuropresage Team, Cyceron, Caen, France; (12)Imaging Genetics Center, Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; (13)Desert-Pacific Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California.; (14)Computational Neuroscience Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; (15)Division of Anatomy, Institute of Basic Medical Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.; (16)Psychology Department and Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin; Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin; 17)Computational Neuroscience Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; Institució Catalana de la Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain; (18)Desert-Pacific Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California; Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.; (19)Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.; (20)Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychological Clinical Science, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.; (21)National Resource Center for Value Education in Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India.; (22)Department of Psychiatry and Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.; (23)National Resource Center for Value Education in Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India; Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India.;(24)Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.; (25)Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, University of California Davis, Sacramento, California.; (26)Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.; (27)Department of Psychology, Rutgers University - Camden, Camden, New Jersey.; (28)Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.; (29)Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma.; (30)Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts;(31)Eduwell Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, INSERM U1028, CNRS UMR 5292, Lyon University, Lyon, France; Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, INSERM U1028, Lyon, France; (32)Department of Biomedical, Metabolic, and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.; (33)Psychiatry Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; (34)Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.; (35)Psychology Department and Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin.; (36)Psychiatry Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Psychiatry Department, Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland.; (37)Meditation Research Program, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; (38)College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona; (39)Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany; (40)Brain and Cognitive Science, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; (41)Center for Brain Science and Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.; (42)Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oxley College of Health & Natural Sciences, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Research Center for Child Mental Development, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan; (43)Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.; (44)Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, INM-7, Brain & Behaviour Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; (45)Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California; T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California.; (46)Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Victoria, Australia; Systems Lab of Neuroscience, Neuropsychiatry and Neuroengineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia; (47)Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, Ohio; Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio; Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.  Anthony.King@osumc.edu . present ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis)-Meditation, the first worldwide collaborative consortium for neuroscientific investigations of meditation practices.

Background

Meditation is a family of ancient and contemporary contemplative mind-body practices that can modulate psychological processes, awareness, and mental states. Over the last 40 years, clinical science has manualized meditation practices and designed various meditation interventions that have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety.

Methodology

Over the past decade, neuroimaging has been used to examine the neuroscientific basis of meditation practices, effects, states, and outcomes for clinical and nonclinical populations. However, the generalizability and replicability of current neuroscientific models of meditation have not yet been established, because they are largely based on small datasets entrenched with heterogeneity along several domains of meditation (e.g., practice types, meditation experience, clinical disorder targeted), experimental design, and neuroimaging methods (e.g., pre-processing, analysis, task-based, resting-state, structural magnetic resonance imaging). These limitations have precluded a nuanced and rigorous neuroscientific phenotyping of meditation practices and their potential benefits.

Results

Here, we present ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis)-Meditation, the first worldwide collaborative consortium for neuroscientific investigations of meditation practices. ENIGMA-Meditation will enable systematic meta- and mega-analyses of globally distributed neuroimaging datasets of meditation using shared, standardized neuroimaging methods and tools to improve statistical power and generalizability.

Conclusion

Through this powerful collaborative framework, existing neuroscientific accounts of meditation practices can be extended to generate novel and rigorous neuroscientific insights that account for multi-domain heterogeneity. ENIGMA-Meditation will inform neuroscientific mechanisms that underlie therapeutic action of meditation practices on psychological and cognitive attributes, thereby advancing the field of meditation and contemplative neuroscience. Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier Inc. Conflict of interest statement: Disclosures The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

References

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